The River
by Animeaholic
Summary: An unplanned pregnancy, a loveless marriage, a hopeless life of broken dreams and promises, and the river where it all began…


**The River**

**Rated: T**

**Genres: Angst, Romance**

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Gundam Seed nor do I own the song "The River" by Bruce Springsteen.

_Italics for inner thoughts and flashbacks._

**Summary: **An unplanned pregnancy, a loveless marriage, a hopeless life of broken dreams and promises, and the river where it all began…

**A/N: **So after months of periodically struggling with my other story I show up out of nowhere with an entirely new one! Haha, sorry. Anyway this story is based off of and completely inspired by Bruce Springsteen's incredible song "The River". It is a song that had a profound effect on me. It tells such a sad and emotionally powerful story about lost love, hope, youth, and dreams. There is so much to say about it but I won't take the time to do so here in the A/N. The song really compelled me to right a short story based around the two characters in the song and I thought that Yzak and Flay could fit comfortably into the mould of the song's narrative. I also needed an excuse to come up with a new YxF story! So that's how this one came about. Hopefully now I can get back to Opposites: Suppression. Enjoy and please leave a review!

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Yzak Joule sits upon the dock which he had dove off of on so many glorious summer days of his youth, the same dock where he and Flay once eagerly made love under the moonlight and the sea of endless shining stars, and looks out upon the gleaming reflection cast across the river's calm surface by the setting sun.

He sits here and remembers all of those long gone days of happiness. He remembers how beautiful she used to be back then, how she ruled over all of his thoughts, how she was his angel and he her prince. He remembers how all of the pain, no matter how much it hurt, seemed to wash away when he stared into those gentle blue-gray eyes. He remembers how her touch shot lightning bolts of pleasure all throughout his body, and how his groin would ache every time she would brush her soft lips up against his. He remembers her tight and comforting embrace, how her warm breasts pressed against his chest, how he felt like everything would be alright as long as she was always there to hold him in her arms, and how he thought he would always be there for her when she needed to be locked in his. He remembers how he was so sure that this would all last forever.

But that was a long time ago. That was before it all went away. And now Yzak sits here not as he did when he was a kid of 18, but as he is now; a young man of 23. His face is tired and the sagging lines under his eyes express the apathy and lethargy that most men would never know until they reached midlife. His eyes have lost the passion that they once held; all they seem to show now is a deep sadness and a haunting regret. He looks far beyond his years. A cigarette rests limply in the corner of his mouth, slowly burning away to ashes. A pink piece of paper, folded up into a small, compact, square is gripped loosely in his left hand. He wears a simple charcoal blazer, a white shirt, and faded blue jeans.

His expression tells of a man who is lost and far beyond the point of caring. He knows that there is nothing left to hold onto anymore except for all of those memories, he knows that the life sentence that is his marriage has barely begun, and he knows that hope, for him, is nothing more than a hollow four letter word which carries no gravity or significance. But still he gazes upon the river's glowing surface and recalls better days, somehow seeing the past reflecting in those light blue ripples.

He doesn't know why he still bothers to come back to the river; he has long since given up on the idea that it might help bring back the love and passion that he once felt as a younger more foolish man. Perhaps it is just because the river is still here. It is the only thing that has remained the same throughout all of the constant changes over the years. He has lost everything else that he had back then, every dream, every desire, all of the affection for the woman he once called his Angel, but the river was still here.

Or maybe he just needed a place to get away from it all, and it was just so quiet and peaceful here. His friends have all moved on, chasing after their dreams and not being held back by their past. He hasn't made so much as an acquaintance since he has reached adulthood. The only people in his life are a screaming toddler and a detached wife. He needed to get away sometimes.

In some sense his relationship with the bottle helped him get away every night, but it was never enough, and sometimes he just had to get in the car and go. The river was a place of solitude, a place where he could go to forget about the women in his life for a while.

In many ways those last few weeks of that long gone summer were the last few weeks of his life. Yzak didn't consider what he had been doing since then living, to him it was more like enduring. Getting up and punching the clock on another day until the forces of nature decided that his time was finally up. He didn't have much to live for, and no matter how hard he tried to drown the pain away with alcohol it never left him, after all he has to face it every day of his life when he gets up and sees his wife's sad face and hears his daughter's hyper screams.

He knows that things were the same for Flay now too. She had tried ruthlessly to be a good mother, but she seems to have finally came to the realization that she wasn't cut out to mother a child, at least not at such a young age. It didn't help of course that her husband would get home from work and drop in front of the TV drinking beer after beer until he decided it was time to go to bed, offering no support and no affection.

There have been countless fights, long and graphic, but they had ended over the past year. They stopped because Flay had finally given up too. And now every morning when their eyes met there was an unspoken mutual recognition that they were both just going through the motions, waiting for their time to run out.

He exhales a stream of smoke and releases a heavy sigh. Closing his eyes he massages his temples and recalls the day he first met her. Yzak never knew how powerful a woman's beauty could be until the day he laid eyes on 17 year old Flay Allster. He had been captivated by many beautiful women in his life, had even lain with some of them, but never had he been levelled by a woman's eyes, never had he felt weak in the knees, never had the beauty of a woman drained him of all of his confidence and composure and left him trembling inside. He stood in awe when he saw how the gentle wind played calmly with her fiery red locks of hair. When their eyes first met it felt as though an anvil had dropped into his stomach. Those blue-gray eyes had paralyzed him, making Flay Allster's stare no less powerful than that of Medusa's.

For the first time in his life Yzak had not known how to approach a girl; he was clueless as to how he should interact with her and how he could charm her. All of his charm left him as he gazed into those hauntingly gorgeous eyes.

He now remembers how full of life and passion those eyes had been back then, and how now they were filled with nothing more than a cold empty sadness.

Still he knew that he needed to have her, because that day on the river bank, surrounded by his many high school friends and acquaintances, Yzak for the first time felt like he could fall in love. There had been a time when Yzak was a cold hard introvert who cared nothing for love or socializing. But after time Dearka and his other friends had changed him, they helped him to open up, calm down and enjoy life.

He had a few girlfriends in the past and had shamefully hooked up with a few women at parties after one too many Budweiser's but he had never felt anything that he could even remotely compare to love. In all his experiences with women he had thought them to be nothing more than good friends whom he was comfortable enough with and attracted to enough to be intimate with; as far as his young heart was concerned men and woman never really got any closer than that. He wasn't even sure that he believed in love.

That all changed when he first became a prisoner of those beautiful blue-grays. When he looked at Flay he felt something stronger than he had ever felt before, a sort of natural magnetic force of attraction that seemed to scream to him that he needed this girl, needed her to need him, needed to know everything about her and needed her to know everything about him.

He of course was not naïve and foolish enough to believe that he was in love at first sight, she could of course turn out to be someone he absolutely hated, what he felt now was nothing more than a powerful desire and attraction and he knew that it would be foolish to call this desire love.

But he also knew how foolish it would be for him to ignore it and not try to act on his desires, because the way he felt right now somehow felt so right, like he knew that he could fall in love if he got to know this girl whose beauty had decimated him.

How it hurts now for him to remember how good it felt when he first saw her all of those years ago and how it hurts so much more to know that when he looks at her now he feels only sadness and regret. When he looks into her sad eyes now he sees only what might have been and is haunted by the memories of how great it had felt to think that he had been in love.

If only it didn't have to end up this way, if only he could somehow fix it and feel that passion for her once more. But he knows that six wasted years of pain, harsh fights, and emotional exhaustion have cruelly stamped out any chance for that to ever happen. And now he just sits here as he has done so many lonely nights before, yearning for what once was and lamenting over what might have been.

The sun has sunken deeper into the horizon and shades of night have enveloped the sky. Stars twinkle dimly and the chilling winds of a mid-summer's evening begin to chill his body and quiet his sorrowful soul. He tosses the remainder of his cigarette into the river and gazes into the darkening sky, slowly slipping back into those scenes of the long gone days of his youth.

"_She never really lost that beauty, it just sort of dulled." _He thinks. She is still very beautiful today but it is not the same anymore. It is a sad sort of haunting beauty that has lost its radiant glow and paralyzing powers of attraction. He supposes this is because those old feelings have died and feelings of sorrow, disdain, and loss have taken their place. Four years of motherhood and crippling stress have no doubt taken their toll as well.

He sees it so clearly, that first night of romance with Flay. A ring of his former compatriots sitting around the brilliantly glowing fire on the river bank. Couples sitting together in passionate embraces, absorbing the romantic atmosphere of the perfect warm summer's night. The coolers, once filled to capacity with all varieties of alcoholic beverages now sit nearly empty along the ground. Dearka strums his beat up old six string, his baby Miriallia resting gently on his lap, as Athrun's powerful voice follows the steady rhythm of the guitar bringing the music to life with the heartfelt vocals of the classic Eagle's number "Peaceful Easy Feeling".

He feels every vivid detail of that night so long ago. It is as if Flay's warm body, wrapped in that heavy red beach towel is snuggling up against him, resting her head on his shoulder, right here on the dock just as she did on that one perfect night from a summer that feels so far away. He feels once again how his body shivered helplessly with desire every time she took a breath onto the exposed skin of his neck. He smells the faint aroma of her citrus scented shampoo and fresh river water drifting from her slowly drying hair.

It all seems so surreal now, as if it came from a different life time. He supposes that in some sense it did; the memory is a portrait of the life of a young man whose heart was filled with dreams and aspirations of an exciting future of endless possibilities that still lay ahead of him; a young man who finds himself slowly falling in love for the first time and finds himself captivated by happiness. It is from the life of a young man who thinks that maybe all he'll ever need to be happy in life is to have this beautiful young girl by his side.

That young man is now nothing more than a spectre of the past which haunts him every day. The man who sits upon this dock has been worn down to nothing by a dead end life and is tired of having to wake up and face the world every morning. This man no longer believes in love and he knows that he can never be truly happy again.

He wonders how he could have ever been happy back then in the first place. After all that has happened since then the idea that he was once happy and in love feels so foreign and fake. Was it all just a lie? Was everything he felt back then somehow not real? Perhaps time has just played cruel tricks on him. Maybe the way his memory presents him with these moments makes them seem far more perfect than they ever actually were in reality.

Their first real moment alone, standing upon this very dock in the still of the night, away from all of the others.

_He's blushing, and she giggles at his timid expression. She feels as though she is seeing a special side of him, a side that he would never let all of his other friends see. In this moment she feels that she could stare at him forever, she has never seen such an adorable expression on a boy's face before._

"_Don't laugh!" he snarls, trying desperately to regain his confident and hard-edged composure._

_She beams at him a smile so bright and perfect that he quickly has to look away in a vain attempt to hide his increasingly darkening red face._

"_I'm sorry! I didn't mean to embarrass you!"_

"_I'm not embarrassed!" he growls, but his claim is easily shot down by the bright red glow of his cheeks. _

"_I'm just not good with emotional stuff like that… that's all!"_

_She breaks down into a complete fit of giggles, she can't help it, his defensiveness is just too cute._

"_Stop laughing!" Yzak barks, a look of flustered defeat on his face. But his command only seems to make her laugh harder._

_A devious smile curves across the corners of Yzak's mouth. Flay has her guard down and he sees the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge. Slowly he creeps up behind her, towards the edge of the dock, careful not to give himself away. But she is so lost in her giggle fit that he really doesn't need to try too hard at all. He presses his hand against the small of her back and gives her a quick, gentle, shove. She stumbles and waves her arms in a desperate, comical, bid for balance before tumbling directly into the river with a giant splash._

_It is now Yzak's turn to erupt with laughter. Seconds later she angrily resurfaces, her cherry red locks soaked to the sides of her face. She spits out a mouth full of water and then opens her mouth to yell her disapproval at the actions of the young man howling with laughter on the dock above her. _

_Before she can start her tirade however he abruptly stops and stares deep into her eyes. A smirk, playful yet confident, takes over his expression and in a soft, teasing voice he says:_

"_I warned you not to laugh didn't I?"_

_Something in his face warms her inside. She can't quite point her finger on it, and she doesn't really want to know exactly what it is either. As a hopeless young romantic she truly believes that moments are more perfect, feelings more powerful, when they are shrouded in mystery. If she knew exactly what it was, it would just make it feel less special. Whatever it is, it makes her think that for the first time she is looking at a boy who is more than just another handsome face, but a boy who can make her feel amazing and satisfy the seemingly insatiable desires of her young heart. At this moment she is lost in him, they are the only two people on earth, and honestly she doesn't think she would much mind if it just stayed like this forever._

_But then the trance is crudely snapped by a large splash beside her. She jumps a little bit from the impact of the sudden surprise. The boy with the silver hair rises from beneath the rivers cold surface. His silver hair shines in the moonlight and his sapphire eyes sparkle like the thousands of shining stars in the sky. That ever so sweet smile has not left his face. He swims closer to her and pulls her body tightly up against his. _

_No words are spoken; they simply stare deeply into each other's eyes. Slowly they come together, and for the very first time his lips meet hers. _

He slowly brings his fingers to his lips as he tries to recall that perfect sensation of the first kiss he ever had with Flay Allster. He racks his mind, trying to remember how long it has been since he has last tasted those soft lips. It has been at least two and a half years since they had any physical connections with one another. When the love and desire was dead, he couldn't bring himself to touch her anymore. Making love with her brought about only pain, and her kisses tasted of failure and all of his shattered hopes and dreams. Eventually she stopped trying and she has never tried again since. They gave up on each other.

He can hear her screaming voice;

"_Why can't you love me anymore? Why do you get so stiff and cold whenever I try to love you?"_

"_Who is she Yzak? What does she have that I don't!?"_

He feels a lump of shame rise in his throat. Of course he had never lain with another woman, he could never do that. But he could never convince Flay of his innocence. All he ever did was lose his temper and get defensive, which he knows only made it seem like he had something to hide.

He could have done so much better for her, should have done so much better for her. If he could have just sat her down calmly and told her how he really felt he could have made her believe him. He knows that now and he feels ashamed. But the accusations always hurt him too much, and he was far too worn down by countless days and nights of hard labour, whiskey, and the screaming of the two females in his life.

_Parked at the river on a bitter autumn's night, Flay cries her heart out in the passenger's seat. Yzak firmly grasps her hand, waiting patiently for Flay to finally gather the resolve to tell him what was wrong. His heart pounds nervously in his chest, his sweat is cold, and his mouth is drier than sand paper. There are eagles flying in his stomach and there is a dull ache of fear in his heart. He feels certain that this is the end, that she is going to break up with him. He desperately tries to figure out what he could have done so wrong._

_She finally speaks. "Y…Yzak…"_

_Her pulls her into a warm embrace, tears slowly gather in the corners of his swollen eyes._

"_What is it baby, please tell me!"_

_The silence is haunting and agonizing. He cannot believe what he has heard. He knows what he must do but he can't find the words to tell her. Finally it comes out, and he says it with a force that almost frightens her. _

"_I'm not going anywhere, we'll do this together!"_

"_B..but daddy says…"_

"_I don't care what he says! I love you, we wanted to spend our lives together, we talked about having kids someday, it was the future we dreamed of! This wasn't planned, and it is going to be difficult. We have to move along faster than we wanted too but there is no reason we can't give that kid all of the love it deserves. We just have to work hard to give it a good life! We can do it together! I know we can! You will be an amazing mother and I will bust my hump to bring us financial success!"_

It hurts him so much to think of that night. Because on that night he truly believed that they would make it and have a wonderful life together, that was his dream, to have a peaceful life filled with love and happiness with Flay and their child. On that night the love was still there. There was so much to look forward too. Sure he was scared, but in many ways he was also excited because he knew that if they could just make it through the hard times early on he would have the happy life that every man dreams of. There was something to dream about back then. There was hope back then.

Painful tears of anger and shame begin to fall from his sad sapphire eyes. He bites his lip so hard that it draws blood and clenches his fist as tight as he possibly can.

"We didn't make it damn it. I failed…"

He failed because he gave up on his love and turned to alcohol to comfort him instead of the loving arms of his wife. He failed because his father wasn't there to show him how to be a good dad to his daughter. He failed because he was stuck in a job that tore apart his resolve and made him feel worthless while all of his friends were off working on their degrees so that they could do something they enjoyed for the rest of their lives. He failed because his friends all left him behind and he missed them. He failed because he was weak, and everything in life was too much for him. He failed because he was a fool.

_They stand before the judge. Flay's pale face is dominated by a sadness that Yzak cannot bring himself to understand. Her sadness hurts him. Why isn't she happy? We're getting married, doesn't she love me?_

_George Allster fires a cold glare at Yzak and then returns to staring at his daughter with a look of disgust. _

_He quickly scribbles his signature next to Ezalia Joule's before thrusting the pen impatiently at his daughter. _

_As they all exit the court house George quickly gets into his Lincoln and drives off without a word. _

_Silent tears roll down Flay's pale cheeks. Ezalia gives her a loving embrace and some encouraging words before asking her to wait in the car while she talks to Yzak._

_She kisses her son affectionately on the cheek and gives him a serious look._

"_You have to be there for her Yzak, she needs you now more than ever! You better be good to her!"_

"_Of course I will mother, what kind of man do you think I am anyway!"_

"_Yzak… it is a lot easier to say something like that, believe me."_

"_But I love her mother, I'll never back out on her!"_

"_You're all she has left now Yzak."_

_Ezalia sighs and looks at the beautiful young girl sobbing into her handkerchief in the back seat of her car._

"_You know Yzak… When women are little girls they always like to dream about the day when they get married. They hold onto those silly childhood ideas until the day they meet that perfect man so that they can bring it all to life and make the dream a reality. Do you think Flay always dreamed of marrying her perfect man in a courthouse with no audience and not so much as a wedding dress to accentuate her beauty?"_

He looks at the pink piece of paper crumpled up into his fist. After all of this, he can't even provide his family with financial security anymore. What is he going to do? His mother can help them out for a while, but there is no work in this dead end town anymore, and he has nowhere else to go.

He falls to his knees and smashes his fists hard onto the dock. He has never in his life shed tears like this. They are not only tears of anger, they are also tears of mourning, remorse, and regret. They are the tears of a man who has fallen so hard that all he has to hold onto are a bunch of old memories and dreams that never came true.

"God…fucking…DAMMIT!" he now regrets the fact that he didn't stop off at home after work, he desperately needs a drink. He needs something to make the pain go away.

"Why did it have to be like this?" he asks through his heaving sobs. There is no longer any anger in his voice, there is only defeat and pain. Yzak Joule is lost.

"Yzak?" comes a concerned voice from behind him.

He quickly wipes his eyes in a vain attempt to hide his tears before turning to face the voice.

It was Flay. What was she doing out here?

He turns his back, too ashamed to face her.

"I figured you'd be here…" she says softly, and not without a trace of sympathy. "So I dropped Jade off at your mother's for the night and decided to come and check."

Yzak had been so lost in thought that he hadn't even noticed how dark it was getting. He glances at his wrist watch, 9:35.

"Why didn't you come home?"

He says nothing, he merely passes her the pink sheet of paper and waits for her to lambast him.

Flay looks at the paper but she does not question him, she just stands quietly behind him.

"What! Don't you want to tell me how useless I am? Don't you want scream at me for being a failure?" he angrily accuses her as the tears begin to fight their way back out of the corners of his eyes.

"Yzak…I…"

"I'M SORRY Alright! I know that it is all my fault. I know that I've been horrible to you, and to Jade! I know that I didn't live up to my promises and that I hurt you so bad. I know that I killed our love and trapped us in this Hell! I know that I am an alcoholic. I've known all of this for a long time. I wish I could just go back and change it all but I can't. And now I can't even provide for us anymore. I know that you want to take Jade and leave, and you should! I bring nothing but pain!"

His angry self-deprecating rant is abruptly cut off when she puts her arms across his chest and pulls him into a tight embrace, resting her body against his back.

For a moment they just stand there in silence, Yzak overwhelmed by shocked. Then, the next sentence that comes out of her mouth is somehow enough. It comforts him and makes him feel that maybe things are going to be alright, that there might still be some hope after all.

"I never stopped loving you Yzak…"

After everything that has happened over the years, she still loves him. Despite having every reason to give up on him she never did. There was something amazing about that, something that made him feel like less of a failure and gave him strength to think that he might be able to do it; he might be able to change, and fix things, he might be able to make the dream come true after all. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, so much he had to say, he didn't know where to start.

And before he could he felt a gentle push into the small of his back and stumbled forward, struggling to keep his balance, and fell directly into the river with a giant splash.

He erupts to the surface full of anger and shock.

"Damn it Flay what the Hell was-"

She's giggling, just like she did on that magical night so long ago. Yzak Joule finds himself breathless. She is as beautiful as she was on the day that he first saw her, and he is just as speechless as he was on that faithful day. It is as if all of the pain and stress of the years gone by have never even been there in the first place.

She jumps off the dock and lands next to him with that familiar splash. She throws her arms around his neck and for the first time in years they get lost in each other's eyes. As their lips come together Yzak Joule thinks to himself;

"_Maybe the river isn't so dry after all…"_

It would not be easy, they had many difficult challenges ahead of them and they may fail once again. But they would still have each other, and as long as they had each other they would have hope. As long as they had each other, they would always have the river.

**A/N: Well there it is, I really hope that you enjoyed it and it wasn't too terrible! Please leave me a review with your thoughts, good or bad, I'd love to hear them. I apologize for not fully telling the story of Yzak and Flay's relationship, but I wanted to present the back story in fragments to make them resemble true memories more. I also thought that the story would just work better if I only gave you a snapshot of their past together instead of going to great lengths to expose the whole thing. Sometimes less is more. Also just to be clear, Yzak never really stopped loving Flay, he just convinced himself that his love for her was dead because as things began to look bad and he made more mistakes he was positive that she couldn't possibly love him anymore. His feelings that she didn't love him anymore because of everything he had done wrong was essentially at the heart of all of the emotional problems Yzak had as well as all of his self-hate. I know that I didn't do a very good job of portraying that in the story so I wanted to drop it into the Author's Note. Lastly be sure to support Bruce Springsteen, he's the fucking boss!**


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